Could the ban on One sixth form students parking in residential streets in Pinewood become permanent?
One sixth form, in Scrivener Drive, Ipswich. - Credit: Gregg Brown
After six years of protests and petitions, the row over parking around One sixth form may soon be coming to an end.
Suffolk County Council (SCC) will make a decision this month on whether to permanently enforce parking restrictions in some of the streets around the Ipswich college designed to ban students from leaving their vehicles outside residents’ homes.
In September last year the council painted yellow lines on certain roads around Pinewood in a bid to stop people parking dangerously and inconsiderately.
Residents had claimed the students from the sixth form based in Scrivener Drive were making a mess of their streets and were clogging up the roads to the point that they couldn’t have visitors or deliveries.
As a result, SCC introduced the restrictions on a six-month trial basis to allow for fast implementation and for residents to give feedback and suggest changes if they didn’t feel like the scheme was working.
During this time the council received four official objections to the experimental traffic regulation orders (ETROs).
Within the complaints residents said the yellow lines had simply pushed the students to park in other streets further away from the college, causing problems for the people who live there.
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One objector from Goldcrest Road said: “The ETRO is nothing more than a token gesture by SCC which has done nothing to prevent students from ‘clogging up’ our environment.”
Another complainant, who lives in Bramblewood, said the single yellow line outside their home was stopping residents from being able to have visitors during the week, adding: “They have never and never will try and park across a drive or lowered kerb so the line is a waste of time but limits the residents to invitational visits from friends and family members during the week.”
On June 16 councillors will discuss the findings of the parking trial during a meeting of SCC’s Rights of Way Committee. The recommendation is for the waiting restrictions to be made permanent.
If this is not agreed during the meeting, then the issue will have to go back to the committee at a later date.
The two alternative options are to remove the experimental restrictions or amend the restrictions and allow for a further six-month trial period for objections.
Within the committee agenda it reads: “The council is required to consider carefully the balance to be struck between individual rights and the wider public interest.
“In this case, officers consider that the interference with convention rights, if there is any, will be justified in order to secure the significant benefits in improving access and road safety.”